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The IAM Union (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) issued the following statement in response to the recent story published by the Coalition for a Prosperous America:
The Coalition for a Prosperous America’s glowing profile of Whirlpool Corporation reads like a press release written by an out-of-touch corporate CEO and executive board. While trade officials toured a washing machine factory in Clyde, Ohio, for photo opportunities, Whirlpool is simultaneously abandoning nearly 1,000 union workers and their families in Amana, Iowa.
We recently sent a letter to Whirlpool Corporation Chairman and CEO Marc Bitzer, demanding a meeting with company leadership to address layoffs in the Amana, Iowa, manufacturing workforce and to establish a path forward for IAM members still working at the Whirlpool facility. Our Union has yet to hear back from CEO Bitzer.
Let’s be clear about what Whirlpool’s record actually looks like for working people. While the company accepts $300 million in Ohio investment incentives and poses for pictures with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, it has eliminated nearly 1,000 jobs at its Amana, Iowa, refrigeration facility over the past year. The Iowa location is one of the most historic manufacturing communities in America.
IAM Union research shows Whirlpool has invested more than $1 billion in Mexico over the last 20 years, tripling its workforce there, while the Amana facility, which once employed more than 3,000 workers, could be reduced to as few as 500 to 600 workers following the March 9 layoffs and anticipated second-quarter cuts
These are IAM members who showed up every day and built Whirlpool’s bottom line. Their reward is a pink slip, with no severance.
The Coalition for a Prosperous America wants to paint a pretty picture about tariffs saving American manufacturing. These short-sighted trade policies are driving up costs for working families and threatening jobs. We support fair trade and enforceable trade policies that protect workers. Our Union recently joined labor experts and Congressional allies for a briefing designed to make clear exactly what a trade policy that puts workers first must look like.
The priorities the IAM outlined were direct: strengthen rules of origin to prevent offshoring, close the loopholes that allow Chinese transshipment and final assembly through Mexico, expand and reinforce labor enforcement tools like the Rapid Response Mechanism under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, narrow the persistent wage gaps that incentivize job flight, and protect strategic manufacturing sectors.
While USMCA is attempting to fix some of the failed promises of NAFTA, weak enforcement, exploitable loopholes, and growing foreign manipulation continue to put American jobs at risk. The USMCA review is an opportunity to make a genuine commitment to American manufacturing. Not a ribbon-cutting in Ohio while workers in Iowa are packing up their things and heading to the unemployment rolls.
Fair trade policy is not a permission slip for corporations to pocket competitive advantages in one state while stripping communities bare in another. Tariff protection without worker protections is just corporate welfare with a flag on it.
CEO Marc Bitzer collected more than $12 million in compensation in 2024. The company has also announced a $1 billion stock buyback program. And yet the workers in Amana, the workers whose labor built the very brand identity Whirlpool now uses to attract federal favor, are being betrayed.
If Ambassador Greer truly wants to understand American manufacturing, we invite him to visit Amana, Iowa. He should look the Whirlpool workers of IAM Local 1526 in the eye and explain why trade policy that only benefits Whirlpool’s shareholders is worth celebrating when the company is dismantling a community that gave it decades of loyalty and labor.
Our union is nearly 138 years old, so we know what real commitment to American manufacturing looks like. It is not measured in corporate press releases. It is measured by whether the workers who build your products can afford to live in the communities where they build them.
Our hope is for the USTR to stop letting corporate CEO’s bamboozle them into taking victory laps on the state of manufacturing in our country.
Whirlpool didn’t just start in America. It is walking away from America, one layoff at a time.
